EXCLUSIVE: Elderly Man Recalls Vicious Beating

MIAMI (CBS4) – It’s difficult to look at the severe bruising and cuts all over Felix Espinosa’s face and neck. It’s harder still to hear him describe how he got them.

“A man appeared and asked me for money. I told him I don’t have any, and so without saying anything else he beat me in the face,” Espinosa told CBS4’s Natalia Zea in Spanish, exclusively.

The man attacked Espinosa while he sat on a bus bench just over a week ago at Southwest 10th Avenue and 7th Street in Little Havana. Espinosa used to take the bus every morning to a senior center where he plays dominoes and eats lunch.

“I’m 88, he was a man of like, 20, so I couldn’t defend myself,” said Espinosa.

Espinosa was in the hospital for more than a week. He says the attack was so shocking he didn’t even have time to be afraid.

Santana is taking care of him now. He is sleeping on her sofa while he recovers. While he was in the hospital, his apartment flooded. His furniture is ruined.

“(The furniture) is in really bad shape; he doesn’t have anything now,” she told Zea in Spanish.

While the beloved uncle tries to piece his life and his health back together the man who caused all his pain is free tonight. Espinosa said, “He committed a crime, they need to find him and he needs to pay for what he did to me.”